Schmidt says Icecream Sandwich ready for Christmas

Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman has been telling the world+dog that the next version of Android will be released in October or November.

This will mean that we will see Ice Cream Sandwich machines ready in time for Christmas. Schmidt mentioned this at the Dreamforce conference and added Google was excited about the upcoming launch.

ICS uses Google's tablet and phone interfaces to form a unified platform. However other than that it is a bit of a mystery.

Google has been developing the "open" platform behind closed doors using a level of secrecy that only Apple would be proud of. Some heavily censored screenshots were leaked last month provided a glimpse of a new Honeycomb-like application launcher interface running on an Android phone.

Google is expereced to have a flagship smartphone, dubbed the Nexus Prime to ship alongside the ICS release. It will be targeting Apple's upcoming iPhone 5 during the Christmas rush.